Paper short abstract:

Although Kinshasa is linguistically associated with Lingala, Kikongo has played a major role in the city’s linguistic history. Both colonially and post-colonially, Kikongo served as a repertoire of rural/traditional authenticity, contrasting with the urban, hybrid connotation of Lingala.

Paper long abstract:

In the streets of Kinshasa, Lingala is the main spoken language. Kinois Lingala, often interspersed with French, evokes an association with urbanity and modernity, partly due to its global spread through Kinshasa's vivid music scene. However, the city also knows a significant history of Kikongo presence. In the 1950s, some members of the Belgian colonial Commission of African Linguistics even proposed to replace Lingala by Kikongo as the official language for education and administration in the Congolese capital. Based on arguments of authenticity and efficient colonial domination, these individuals pleaded for the reinforcement of Kikongo to break the dominance of Lingala, which they considered to be an 'urban gibberish without native speakers'.

Although Lingala is the dominant language in postcolonial Kinshasa, some nodes of Kikongo can still (or again?) be found. More specifically, Kimbanguist churches and musicians that call themselves traditional make use of Kikongo as a repertoire that affirms their spiritual authority. This claim is often based on the evocation of the pre-colonial Kongo kingdom, which resonates notions of spiritual authenticity and traditional control of occult powers. As such, language attitudes towards Kikongo contrast with/complement those towards Lingala.

In this paper, based on preliminary archival research and fieldwork, I (a) look at the differences/convergences between colonial and postcolonial attitudes towards the presence of Kikongo in the mainly Lingalaphone capital and (b) question the tendency to stress the unilateral dominance of urban killer languages like Lingala, by examining to what extent Kikongo, as a linguistic repertoire of rurality and tradition, permeates the urban sphere of Kinshasa.